Review: The Gyro Bowl

Review: The Gyro Bowl

Look, let’s not muddle up the main point with facts: the Löopa Gyro Bowl isn’t perfect. Yes, it’s dishwasher-safe. It’s BPA-free. It’s (according to their website) “virtually indestructible.” That means, as far as I know, that you can’t destroy it in virtual reality worlds like Second Life. The Gyro Bowl is a whole lot of great things, I guess. But unfortunately, it also looks like a toy and a challenge for kids. The minute some punk kid (read: your kid) sees that the inner-bowl rotates 360 degrees in every direction, the kid is most-definitely going to try to spill whatever’s in the bowl. Adults, believe it or not, will try to spill whatever’s in the bowl too. And more often than not, if a kid (or an adult) puts his mind to it, they’re going to succeed. But with a little conditioning and some play-time while the bowl is empty, you too can benefit from owning the Gyro Bowl. For awhile, at least. In my experience with the Gyro Bowl, which has been not-much so far, I’ve had Cheerios all over my rug multiple times. But there’s a bright side. The best place I’ve seen the Gyro Bowl successfully not-spilling things has been on my couch. Because the couch cushions generally have more slight, un-catestrophic movements, the Gyro Bowl is actually pretty successful at maintaining itself. And to be fair, most of the time, I can give my kid a Gyro Bowl full of Cheerios and he’ll grab it by the handles and bring it to the couch without spilling. But he also does that with normal bowls too. And sometimes, if my kid’s feeling crazy, he decides he’s going to spin the Gyro Bowl’s inner bowl, and then, we’ve got Cheerios everywhere.

Whatever that caption says, I probably agree.

The Gyro Bowl does come with a convenient snap-on lid. Because even the creators doubted their product and knew you needed a failsafe. It seems like this bowl does best with kids that are already old enough to be behaving with normal bowls. Babies will just knock it over, negating the rotating inner-bowl. Toddlers will find it a game to spill the contents. Older kids, frankly, know better. So who’s this bowl aimed at?! The answer, of course, is “who cares!” Everyone will buy the Gyro Bowl because of its gimmick, and when snacks get lodged between the inner and outer bowls and stop it from rotating, we’ll all forget what we paid for it. By the way, the Gyro Bowl should be docked a point for their website. It employs one of the cheapest, smarmiest tactics on the internet – when you try to close the site or go elsewhere, a window pops up, asking if you’re SURE that you’d like to leave their site. It’s the internet’s version of “But wait – there’s more!” It’s deceptive, it’s misleading, and it’s bad web design. I should be docking a point for that crap, but I won’t since you can get the product in places other than their website. So, you win THIS round, Gyro Bowl. Your score is still barely over meh. Yes, that’s a technical term. I did, however, give this a stellar kid-approval of 5 baby wieners up because kids of every age will have fun playing with this bowl. It’s just that when you get it in your head that this thing is supposed to be a utility and not a toy that the disappointment comes rolling in. My wife loves the Gyro Bowl. I don’t. She can go make her own website.